Amazon Fresh grocery supermarket (smart carts & no checkout lines) shows the future of Whole Foods in 5 years

[RastaMentality]

Opened last month in Woodland Hills, CA:

Introducing the first Amazon Fresh grocery store

Today we’re announcing the Amazon Fresh grocery store—a new grocery store designed from the ground up to offer a seamless grocery shopping experience, whether customers are shopping in-store or online. We’ve taken our decades of operations experience to deliver consistently low prices for all, and…

blog.aboutamazon.com

Yeah maybe the antitrust folks shouldn't have allowed this Whole Foods buyout.

 

[rude]

What's the problem with this concept other than it being spearheaded by Amazon tho. I like it.

edit: I didn't think about the job loss. Yeah this is bad. My local Ralph's has a bunch of automated self-checkout machines now, but they need employees to help people weigh stuff/scan regardless.

 

[XenodudeX]

I bet its expensive as fuck too

 

[theincredibleone]

More jobs lost to technology which will eventually bleed into other forms of retail killing that industry further. That's why we need some sort of Universal Basic Income or mass new industries with new kinds of jobs.

 

[Jakisthe]

Seems fine to me.

For those worried about job loss, well, for one, "it keeps people hired" is not a very compelling reason for improving the lives of people (in this case, making grocery shopping a less annoying experience), and for two:

Furthermore, other analysis we have done suggests that any job losses from automation are likely to be broadly offset in the long run by new jobs created as a result of the larger and wealthier economy made possible by these new technologies. We do not believe, contrary to some predictions, that automation will lead to mass technological unemployment by the 2030s any more than it has done in the decades since the digital revolution began.

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https://www.pwc.com/hu/hu/kiadvanyok/assets/pdf/impact_of_automation_on_jobs.pdf

The United States has a growing workforce, and in the step-up scenario, with innovations leading to new types of occupations and work, it is roughly in balance.

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Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages

In an era marked by rapid advances in automation and artificial intelligence, new research assesses the jobs lost and jobs gained under different scenarios through 2030.

www.mckinsey.com

 

[Deleted member 49611]

Looks good! Hope we start getting stores here. Online I only really use Amazon so having a store would be amazing.

 

[TheMadTitan]

i'm gonna pass so I can continue to get my white onions at the same price as my yellow onions.


But seriously, we're going to need to address the rapid job loss from automation well before 2025.

edit: And they need to open physical locations for more than just groceries.

 

[Deleted member 68874]

It's going to be crazy to see how much the job landscape is going to change in the coming decades.

 

[Cipher Peon]

This seems different than that Amazon Go store? But this looks awesome, I'd love to shop there

 

[Septimus Prime]

Seems fine to me.

For those worried about job loss, well, for one, "it keeps people hired" is not a very compelling reason for improving the lives of people (in this case, making grocery shopping a less annoying experience), and for two:

https://www.pwc.com/hu/hu/kiadvanyok/assets/pdf/impact_of_automation_on_jobs.pdf

Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages

In an era marked by rapid advances in automation and artificial intelligence, new research assesses the jobs lost and jobs gained under different scenarios through 2030.

www.mckinsey.com

Click to shrink...

The thing to remember, though, is that the holders of these new jobs aren't necessarily (or even likely) going to be the people who lose the old jobs. On top of that, baseline requirements for employment will go up, as well, as unskilled labor jobs get replaced by automation.

This, of course, will affect the more vulnerable and uneducated more.

 

[Qvoth]

wow this is cool
are the items more expensive though? surely they are

 

[AndreGX]

This seems like a worse version of the Go stores on a grander scale. Still a net gain I suppose since the Go stores can be limited

 

[Kino]

The thing to remember, though, is that the holders of these new jobs aren't necessarily (or even likely) going to be the people who lose the old jobs. On top of that, baseline requirements for employment will go up, as well, as unskilled labor jobs get replaced by automation.

This, of course, will affect the more vulnerable and uneducated more.

Click to shrink...

Yeah and education seems to get more expensive every year so you can bet that the wealth divide will become that much wider.

 

[RastaMentality]

This seems different than that Amazon Go store? But this looks awesome, I'd love to shop there

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Probably hard to do the Go system on a large scale for a full sized store. They probably haven't nailed the tech yet.

 

[GYODX]

Very cool. Would love to shop there.

Amazon's anticompetitive practices in the e-commerce and cloud computing spaces notwithstanding, there's nothing novel or necessarily anticompetitive about Amazon expanding into new businesses. General Electric, for instance, is a sprawling conglomerate with business segments in power, aviation, finance, healthcare, and more.

 

[Fliesen]

Seems fine to me.

For those worried about job loss, well, for one, "it keeps people hired" is not a very compelling reason for improving the lives of people (in this case, making grocery shopping a less annoying experience), and for two:

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The issue with job loss isn't only that people will be out of work, is - well, to put it simply - robots don't pay income taxes. The more productivity you shift from employee labour to robot labour, you're slowly but steadily bleeding countries dry.

Also, you're feeding a whole lot of data to Amazon.

 

[killerrin]

Probably hard to do the Go system on a large scale for a full sized store. They probably haven't nailed the tech yet.

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It's probably less that they haven't nailed the tech and more that it would be super expensive to renovate all of their existing stores. Especially since they'd have to upgrade the networking infrastructure, pop in cameras every few feet, replace all the shelves with smart shelves, put in place the gates at the enterance and retrain all the staff from the ground up.

Itd be way cheaper to just integrate the tech into the shopping carts and toss the existing ones.

 

[Ze_Shoopuf]

I will never shop there.

I'm not supporting this automation. Screw Amazon.

 

[Jakisthe]

The thing to remember, though, is that the holders of these new jobs aren't necessarily (or even likely) going to be the people who lose the old jobs. On top of that, baseline requirements for employment will go up, as well, as unskilled labor jobs get replaced by automation.

This, of course, will affect the more vulnerable and uneducated more.

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Could be, but I don't know if I see "one person loses their job; other person gains job which otherwise wouldn't have existed" as being on balance definitely a bad thing. Plus, there's still my first point too; jobs don't exist purely for purposes of providing people with employment. "Someone will lose their job if X improvement is adopted" is not a very compelling reason to not get that improvement on it's own merits. Jobs have been made obsolete by the hundreds over the history of people working; I don't see this as being an especially unique case vs, say, computers being introduced.

The issue with job loss isn't only that people will be out of work, is - well, to put it simply - robots don't pay income taxes. The more productivity you shift from employee labour to robot labour, you're slowly but steadily bleeding countries dry.

Also, you're feeding a whole lot of data to Amazon.

Click to shrink...

Well, the idea is that there won't be a shift from employees to robots, because there will be roughly still as many jobs for people to do.

 

[KarmaCow]

It doesn't seem that much more convenient. Even with COVID, lines in grocery stores aren't that arduous.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Could be, but I don't know if I see "one person loses their job; other person gains job which otherwise wouldn't have existed" as being on balance definitely a bad thing. Plus, there's still my first point too; jobs don't exist purely for purposes of providing people with employment. "Someone will lose their job if X improvement is adopted" is not a very compelling reason to not get that improvement on it's own merits. Jobs have been made obsolete by the hundreds over the history of people working; I don't see this as being an especially unique case vs, say, computers being introduced.

Well, the idea is that there won't be a shift from employees to robots, because there will be roughly still as many jobs for people to do.

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I don't disagree with you, but it's--at least this time--not my job on the line. But you're right. We don't have the same jobs now as we did last century, and we shouldn't expect every job today to stick around in the future. The question is what if future jobs show up before we have the work force that's ready for them.

 

[CDX]

If I had one in my city I'd check it out. I honestly hate checkout lines. I just hate having to wait at all to leave a store.

Sams Club has an app where you can basically do the same thing manually, by scanning each item with your phone as you place it in your cart. Amazon now just seems to have automated it into the shopping cart itself.

 

[Magic-Man]

It doesn't seem that much more convenient. Even with COVID, lines in grocery stores aren't that arduous.

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Uhh, retail worker here. You sure about that last part?

 

[KarmaCow]

Uhh, retail worker here. You sure about that last part?

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Of course actually working there is worse in a pandemic, having to interact with people and assholes having a new way to be assholes with mask usuage. I meant as a customer that the difference is longer lines due to social distancing and that isn't the deal breaker that sells me on these stores.

 

[Dark Ninja]

Started getting my groceries delivered to me probably the most convenient thing ever. I know pretty much what I need at this point so I've maximized my delivery. I also don't end up buying stuff I don't need. The delivery fee isn't even that bad for the convenience.

 

[Magic-Man]

Of course actually working there is worse in a pandemic, having to interact with people and assholes having a new way to be assholes with mask usuage. I meant as a customer that the difference is longer lines due to social distancing and that isn't the deal breaker that sells me on these stores.

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Oh, I know. But the lines at my store get ridiculously long, and that's before you have the customers with multiple orders in one cart or want their orders in double paper. I've seen poor customers wait close to 20 minutes.

 

[Devil]

I will never shop there.

I'm not supporting this automation. Screw Amazon.

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Not trying to make a gotcha comment about you personally, but people who follow this line of thought hopefully have a similar stance when they buy games or movies, so no digital games or physical games bought online, no digital subscriptions such as Game Pass or Netflix, cause it kills (or already killed) the need for retail jobs just the same.

We need to find real solutions to this sort of shift in the job market. Technology is gonna evolve no matter what. A small-scale boycott won't stop it. Voting with your wallet rarely works like that.

 

[KarmaCow]

Oh, I know. But the lines at my store get ridiculously long, and that's before you have the customers with multiple orders in one cart or want their orders in double paper. I've seen poor customers wait close to 20 minutes.

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I guess I've been lucky because the stores around me have ended up opening more checkout lanes than normal so the difference in time isn't so drastic. There's no rolling the dice and ending up getting a fast line but that's fine.

 

[Humidex]

Fair to say that the WFM will eventually be phased-out?

 

[Zulith]

If it works like Amazon Go then the biggest upside to this is once you are ready to checkout, you don't have to wait in a long checkout line or use a frustrating self-checkout kiosk that is barking orders at you nonstop in between errors that need a checkout assistant to manually override (i'm looking at you, Safeway), instead you just roll your ass out of the store and you're done. This is a much bigger deal at a grocery store than a convenience store (aka Amazon Go's market)

So with that being the biggest upside for the consumer, it's clearly more about them reducing their workforce than saving us money/time. It's uncomfortable to think about the side effect it continues to have on our society. But every time companies implement more of this stuff, it's one step closer to UBI -- which these companies will be taxed to pay for. They'll pay in the end.

 

[Deleted member 7051]

But every time companies implement more of this stuff, it's one step closer to UBI -- which these companies will be taxed to pay for. They'll pay in the end.

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No they won't. Those corporations barely pay taxes as it is and they're definitely not going to agree to pay significantly more tax than normal to fund a universal basic income in every country they have stores in.

Any time right wing parties get in control of their country's government, as well, those corporations will just get massive tax breaks paid by cutting funding of social programmes.

 

[leder]

So with that being the biggest upside for the consumer, it's clearly more about them reducing their workforce than saving us money/time. It's uncomfortable to think about the side effect it continues to have on our society. But every time companies implement more of this stuff, it's one step closer to UBI -- which these companies will be taxed to pay for. They'll pay in the end.

Click to shrink...

I've got some bad news for you friend

 

[Zulith]

No they won't. Those corporations barely pay taxes as it is and they're definitely not going to agree to pay significantly more tax than normal to fund a universal basic income in every country they have stores in.

Any time right wing parties get in control of their country's government, as well, those corporations will just get massive tax breaks paid by cutting funding of social programmes.

Click to shrink...

Their agreement is not required. The domino effect stemming from automation leading into social justice movements hasn't even reached the budding phase yet. But once it starts things will move swiftly. And I think that automation and how political parties respond to it will be a big driver in cultural change in how people chose to vote as it continues to impact more of our lives.

I've got some bad news for you friend

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It's easy to have the dystopic view that as automation increases there will be no balancing out on the other end. "Those in government and their voters are cruel, it will never happen" is handing them victory before feet hit the ground. Between the ever growing wave of automation and witnessing which large companies are reaping massive gains from the pandemic, and then realizing there is quite a lot of overlap between the two, is really setting the stage for things to come.

 

[Xando]

I will never shop there.

I'm not supporting this automation. Screw Amazon.

Click to shrink...

Automation doesn't need your support. It's gonna happen regardless because it's beneficial to business. Progress will happen
If you like it or not.

 

[Deleted member 7051]

Their agreement is not required. The domino effect stemming from automation leading into social justice movements hasn't even reached the budding phase yet. But once it starts things will move swiftly. And I think that automation and how political parties respond to it will be a big driver in cultural change in how people chose to vote as it continues to impact more of our lives.

Click to shrink...

If they don't agree to it, they won't do it. They don't want to pay taxes now and guess what? They don't pay taxes. Governments are nowhere near consistent enough in their morals or demands to ensure that corporations, who are wholly untrustworthy, will ever shoulder the brunt of a universal basic income for any realistic length of time.

The people that use their services don't particularly want them to pay taxes either because stuff is cheaper for them as a result, so corporations like Amazon can easily spin the public against such measures. While people will gladly push for Amazon to pay their fair share of tax, the second the products they buy from there become more expensive they'll lose interest.

 

[meowdi gras]

Yay! Yet another Amazon revenue stream for people to blindly throw their money into at the expense of worsening wealth disparity, all in the name of "convenience".

 

[Kill3r7]

Amazon will eventually kill off what makes WF unique. That said, whatever arises out of that will serve the many better than WF did for the few.

 

[Mulligan]

Uhh, retail worker here. You sure about that last part?

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Lines are arduous in retail and service jobs because companies and businesses are interested in having as little staff as possible to keep margins high. If stores and restaurants were adequately staffed, lines wouldn't be long and shelves would be regularly stocked.

 

[samoyed]

Automation is a good thing, us not improving people's livelihoods with the benefits of automation is a governance problem.

 

[Deleted member 2772]

Soon the only job on Earth will be people begging each other for cash on Patreon

 

[Pluto]

So Amazon Go technology didn't work and now they are using smart carts instead of letting people just put things into their bags directly?

 

[Cotton McKnight]

I'm conflicted with this. I truly like the technology on display, and at the same time concerned what is going to happen to the average Joe.

 

[Chiaroscuro]

The thing to remember, though, is that the holders of these new jobs aren't necessarily (or even likely) going to be the people who lose the old jobs. On top of that, baseline requirements for employment will go up, as well, as unskilled labor jobs get replaced by automation.

This, of course, will affect the more vulnerable and uneducated more.

Click to shrink...

But that seems unavoidable as technology progresses and costumers demands better services/prices.

The solution isn't creating means of artificially keeping those jobs but creating means of enabling those workers for better positions and/or a system of universal basic income (that will have to be implemented in the future anyway).

Those screaming "fuck automation " are the same kind of people screaming "fuck automobiles" in the past cause cars made job losses in the horse business. Change is unavoidable, better get ready for it than deny it.

 

[Deleted member 37151]

It's amazing that these carts can be cheap enough to make this worthwhile. Especially the loss of people entering something cheap per kg in the trolley but actually putting in something expensive.

 

[bionic77]

A little more convenience in exchange for more efficient and profitable corporations and probably abuse of your privacy and data. Most people cheer for it until when Amazon comes for your job.

That is pretty much what silicon valley does to every industry they "disrupt". Disruption sounds a lot nice than to murder or destroy for profit.

Nothing is going to change though. I mean I am shitting on Amazon and we use their services every week.

 

[JustinBailey]

A little more convenience in exchange for more efficient and profitable corporations and probably abuse of your privacy and data. Most people cheer for it until when Amazon comes for your job.

That is pretty much what silicon valley does to every industry they "disrupt". Disruption sounds a lot nice than to murder or destroy for profit.

Nothing is going to change though. I mean I am shitting on Amazon and we use their services every week.

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You should stop using Amazon's services.

I have. They are an awful, evil company.

 

[FliX]

It's amazing that these carts can be cheap enough to make this worthwhile. Especially the loss of people entering something cheap per kg in the trolley but actually putting in something expensive.

Click to shrink...

The amount of data this will be able to collect about consumers will make it all worth while... I'm sure our corporate overlords are salivating at the idea.

 

[viandante]

automation is great if we have a plan for how to take care of the workers that will inevitably lose their jobs but

*checks notes*

we don't.

 

[tangeu]

We shouldn't be decrying automation, we should be decrying the lack of support systems for those displaced. My local grocery has a scan while shop app and quick check out and it is amazing and makes shopping so much easier.

 

[LifeLine]

We have states where it's illegal to pump your own gas, I doubt it's the future of Whole Foods.